Sorry if the title is a bit weird, I’m curious about what made you believe what you do. Mainstream leftism usually doesn’t go any further than trans rights or maybe UBI in some places, at least from what I know, so what made you go beyond that? You can answer generally or talk about a specific belief, just wanna see what caused the more radical opinions in you
I’m particularly curious about what changed your opinions about the USSR and China, most people think they’re awful, but in here they’re really liked and defended, I’ve even seen a lot of posts denying the Tiananmen massacre and the Holodomor and stuff like that, what made you go to such lengths?
So i think it’s important to remember that the people voting those early liberals were envisioning were all white male landowners, and if there’s any group of people the system is actually accountable to, what do they tend to have in common?
The most powerful politicians rarely have to be disciplined by capital either, because it’s not as simple as just lying, getting into the position to even try for those elections requires working your way through a political system designed to produce liberal capitalist politicians. The more powerful a position, the more impossible it is to simply hide who you are and come out unchanged. It’s really quite solid for maintaining the interests of a certain class.
Why not have a similar system but for a communist party? I think requiring years to decades of consistent accomplishment within an explicitly communist and worker centric party that you’re accountable to is a pretty good way to select people for powerful and important jobs. Sure some rightists could lie their way through, but they shouldn’t ever get that far without going mask off, and like leftists in the democratic party someone going against the ideals in a lower level position can only do so much before getting purged or brought in line.
Eliminating positions of power does sound nice, and it should be done as much as feasible, but outright eliminating formally structured power doesn’t eliminate social power. I think it’s more practical and realistic to intentionally design a system of power to minimize the effect of historical oppressions and biases than it is to abolish formalized power and rely on everyone being self aware enough to not immediately reinvent the oppressions we’ve been taught.
oh yeah I’m not denying that, I just mean even when liberalism was being conceived the people conceiving it wanted mechanisms to control the power we gave to representatives, which we don’t currently have, we just kinda completely ignored that part of the original theory
as for what you suggest, it… I think I understand what you are saying, and it does make sense to me, but correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t it really… not work? Like, the USSR purges did happen because a faction in the government that was fully anti communist and nazi supporting had formed and were controlling very key parts of it, right? then as far as I understand the next leaders after Stalin started following the original doctrine way less until the last leaders were straight up trying to do free market stuff again, and that led to the collapse. most communists I’ve talked to have said that the reformist period was an usurpation of the original idea and it started a process of decay
I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t think it’s ideal to put a lot of trust in a huge position of power, even if the process of getting to it is heavily vetted, because regardless it gives the whole system a very strong and single failure point, that can have disastrous consequences. I think a big fault of the democracies we have today is that so much of our fate is determined by so little. the big issue is, the people that want to progress and improve our lives have to keep doing so forever, but to regress and worsen them, a single time is enough to deal irreparable or extremely lasting damage. I think it’d be overall less risky if we had more of a choice in things
honestly not versed enough in the history of the USSR to get into it, although the PRC uses a similar system and they haven’t collapsed like that. i’ve heard a big issue the USSR faced was failing to transition power to a younger generation, in part because the october revolutionaries were just that popular. socialism is under constant threat, and in a revolution or being encircled by capitalist imperialism there’s a lot of very important, high stakes decisions to make. someone has to make those calls. if we kick it down to direct referendums, someone’s got to write the options. can kind of just keep going down the line until we get to the point of everyone responds to the issue how they see fit, and yeah that’s a lot of choice but is the choice even meaningful at that point? it’s the accountability problem again. being bound by authority doesn’t always feel great but if it goes both ways that’s a type of power. that’s kind of the point of representatives to me, if there isn’t authority somewhere then that authority retreats into social dynamics, and if that authority isn’t being responsible you’ve got to navigate a much more opaque system without clear rules.
sorry for taking so long to respond! felt awful
I would say, It’s not that I mind being bound by authority, I’m more just concerned about how we can make sure we keep getting a “righteous authority”, that uses their power for good and pursues our interests, that does things to benefit us and not to benefit itself, and I’m not sure what kind of screening process could reliably and constantly keep generating that kind of authority without corruption, opportunism, hijacking etc etc happening for prolonged periods of time. If an “authority screening” system fails even just once, it can have disastrous consequences, and I think if it exists throughout the years it’s just innevitable it will fail at some point, we’re all humans after all. But I don’t see how the same problem could happen decentrally, as no position would have enough power to propagate the failure to the rest of the system - and furthermore, the rest of the system would have the authority to intervene and fix the failures, whereas in a centralized system it’s a lot harder for the bottom to stop a failure at the top